Acquired in 2023

After serving as an air traffic controller during World War II, Vincent Mancusi returned to New York and applied to work in a similar role at JFK, then known as Idlewild Airport. While waiting for an opening, Vince took a job with a customs broker and began to learn the trade. Vince was a natural and V. T. Mancusi Inc. customshouse brokers opened in 1950. Initially, the company supported the news industry, aiding Time Inc. and other media companies with the airfreight and customs brokerage work for news photographs.

“Time is an element of profit” became a mantra in the company as it recognized the value of news photography diminished the longer it took to clear and deliver – news waits for no one.

Business boomed as international air transportation boomed, and Vince soon found himself forming relationships with overseas agents. With a particular knack for flavors and fragrances coming from France, Vince helped establish a niche in that market. As these companies began to recognize and utilize the advantages of Foreign Trade Zones, VTM (as the company came to be known) kept pace and began to specialize in servicing FTZs. The cost-saving regulations of the FTZs helped VTM’s clients achieve significant growth and VTM kept pace by adding well trained staff to meet the growing market.

Vince’s sons, Tom and Vin, grew up in the industry and their father’s business, working in the warehouse, as messengers, and in the office learning the trade. Tom earned his customs broker license in 1980, and Vin married Marian, who added a customs broker’s license to her accounting degree and joined the company. The three of them took over for Vincent T. Mancusi during the mid-80s and continued to grow the company through word-of-mouth and their stellar reputation for service, especially the trade-sensitive flavors and fragrances business.

V.T Mancusi Inc. joined the Alba community in July 2023, broadening Alba’s FDA-regulated industry competency. The organizations shared a passion for tackling trade-sensitive product transportation and clearances, and their desire to see their customers succeed, and combining expertise and experiences to aid current and future customers just made sense.

Acquired in 2013

Top Line Express Group was formed when Top Line Express Inc., All-Pack Express Inc., and Top Line Logistics joined forces in the early 2000s. The company focused on air and ocean freight forwarding, customs brokerage, warehousing, distribution, and trucking. The company was based in an office in Jamaica, NY.

Top Line Express Group was not only a friendly company to work for but also offered an engaging and dynamic environment. As a freight forwarding and customs brokerage company, it provided employees with the opportunity to tackle exciting challenges in global logistics, collaborate with international partners, and stay at the forefront of industry innovations. The strong emphasis on teamwork and associate professional growth attracted Alba Wheels Up to the organization and to bring the team in-house.

Founded in 1994

Salvatore Stile II founded Wheels Up International in 1994 with the vision of leveraging the new ideas and technologies of the time to quickly surpass the traditional capabilities of peers in the industry – Customs could quickly find the shipment files submitted by Wheels Up International since the company delivered paperwork in blue folders that stood out against the sea of manila.

Damien joined Sal at Wheels Up in 1998.

The internet and mobile phones were still not commonly used in business, but Sal and his brother Damien embraced the fad and used it to their advantage: five o’clock no longer meant the office was closed as Sal took calls and emails from Asia on his Blackberry.

The company focused on trade-sensitive industries and products, knowing peers traditionally shied away from this business. The strategy worked and Wheels Up International quickly grew and made its first acquisition, a company called Universal Freight, in 1996 which expanded the company’s capabilities within customs brokerage and logistics.

Recognizing partnerships and acquisitions could quickly expand the company’s core competencies, Wheels Up International began to seek out organizations with a strong culture of trade-sensitive experience, long-tenured employees, and an opportunity to benefit from new technologies.

Even though Alba was more than 5 times the size of Wheels Up International, Sal and Damien acquired the company and formed Alba Wheels Up in 1998 based on the values of: Integrity, Honesty, Transparency, Proactivity, Perseverance, Trustworthiness, and Credibility.

Acquired in 1998

Alba was founded in New York in 1949 by three partners who worked with Japanese textile trading houses based in the city. By clearing the textiles and other commodities exported from Japan to the USA after the war, Alba began build a reputation of integrity and reliability. This reputation earned Alba more customers in the apparel business, which still remains a core company competency today.

Broadening capabilities to include footwear and more general commodities, Alba continued to grow. Alba’s owners ran it as a family business, taking care of employees and customers alike while being recognized as the knowledge experts within their field. Alba commanded a strong market position in customs brokerage in the New York area. It came onto Wheels Up International’s radar towards the end of the 1990’s. Alba was acquired by Wheels Up International in 1998.

Acquired in 2022

Many of the core members of KSI started together in their early 20s just as the company became incorporated.  They went from going out together socially to attending each other’s weddings and baby showers; the sign of a group that remains steadfastly committed to one another and their customers.
 
The biggest names in Silicon Valley when KSI began in the late 70s and into the early 80s were some of KSI’s first clients: Hewlett-Packard, Apple, National Semiconductor and Advanced Micro Devices (today AMD).
 
And while KSI is synonymous with semiconductor and electronics supply chain management, the company also supported other industries: auto parts, perishables, wearing apparel…even an upstart film production company at the time named Lucasfilm.
 
Fast forward to 2007 and the opportunity that truly put KSI on the map still lives today in a regulatory framework that spans the globe: the opportunity to contribute to the Harmonized Tariff. KSI submitted text to US Customs to support a customer’s request for an HTS rewrite.  Customs submitted that text to the World Customs Organization, and it’s now in today’s HTS Explanatory Notes, chapter headings and legal notes for Chapter 84.
 
The language turned previously dutiable merchandise duty-free. That change led to writing a series of rulings that changed a key classification, saving the initial customer millions of dollars in duties and benefiting many more subsequently.
 
Word quickly spread throughout the semiconductor and technology industry of KSI’s understanding and capabilities. Along with that came a reputation for doing something different – slowing down and getting it right first.  “Clients trust us to do the work, to call out the things that aren’t right and fix it before it goes to Customs and causes problems later,” comments Glenn Overstreet.  “We’re their outsourced logistics and compliance department.”
 
Alba Wheels Up purchased KSI in November, 2022.